February
7, 2001

WHAT'S
UP WITH THE SAUDIS?West blamed for terrorist attacks

Something
really strange is going on in Saudi Arabia,
but you wouldn't know it if your primary source of
news is the "mainstream" American media. It is only
just now that they are getting around to reporting
the facts, and even then, as we shall see, only to
a limited extent and without bothering to fit the
pieces together. The Associated
Press is reporting that the Saudi Arabian interior
minister, Prince Nayef, has blamed "foreign parties"
for a series of bombings in the Saudi capital that
killed a British man and injured four others. The
London-based Asharq al-Awsat quoted the Prince
as saying: "We know that foreign parties gave the
orders to carry out the blasts. We still need to find
out more about these foreign parties that are behind'"
the suspects. These "foreign parties" were not identified,
except that the culprits are "not from Muslim or Arab
countries." Furthermore, says Prince Nayef, the explosive
devices used in the bombings were "state manufactured"
or else built under the supervision of some state
authority, because "whoever manufactured them had
great knowledge and experience."

TRAIL
OF TERROR

Of
course, a lot of people in the Middle East have a great
deal of knowledge and experience in how to make and plant
a bomb, a fact of which His Highness cannot be unaware.
In the context of the October bombing
of the USS Cole, and the
whole history of the ongoing terrorist
campaign against Western "infidels" sullying the sacred
territory of Islam's holiest sites, the Riyadh incident
angered but hardly surprised Western governments. A terrorist
campaign seemingly directed at British expatriates in the
Saudi kingdom has been going on since the middle of November
2000. On November 18, the
first bomb blast went off in the Saudi capital, where
a British man  Christopher Rodway, 47, an engineer
working at the Saudi military hospital  was killed
by a bomb planted on his automobile. The Saudi authorities
reacted by dismissing
an offer from Britain for aid in solving the case. A
few days later, four more Brits  two of them nurses
who worked at the same hospital as Rodway  were injured
in a similar bomb blast: this time, the reaction came from
British as well as Saudi officials. The latter assured reporters
that the "the incident is a rare case"  say
what?  and authoritatively declared that
it "had no political dimension and was primarily a personal
affair," while the British Foreign Office chimed in with
a similarly lame theory: "The first thing you think of is
a terrorist attack," an anonymous British diplomat told
the London Telegraph, "but the fact that the attacks
have both taken place at the Saudi weekend, and both involved
British nationals who worked in the same hospital, may steer
us towards the theory that it may be some kind of personal
motive."

THROUGH
THE LOOKING GLASS

Well,
yes, the first thing you think is indeed a terrorist attack,
but apparently the Saudis weren't buying it. The next thing
we knew, an
American was being held in connection with the bombings:
one Michael Sedlak, an employee of the Vinnell Corporation
 more on them later  had been arrested and was
suspected of ordering the bombings. An American?
What's up with that? As Lewis Carroll put it: "'Curiouser
and curiouser!' cried Alice
(she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite
forgot how to speak good English)."

EXPATRIATES
IN WONDERLAND

The
authorities (both Saudi and British) were still pushing
the "personal grudge" theory hard, at this point, with one
Saudi princeling averring that Sedlak "had some problems"
with one of the victims: at the same time, a number of foreigners
were rounded up and arrested on some vague
alcohol-related charges, among them Alexander "Sandy"
Mitchell, 44, chief anesthesiologist at a military hospital
in Riyadh. The story was put out that some kind of falling
out over money related to smuggling was the motive for the
murders. When
the third bomb blast went off, however, the expatriate
community began to suspect that things
weren't quite what they seemed: with Sedlak, the alleged
mastermind, in custody, the bomb  a seemingly harmless
fruit juice can placed on the windshield of a car 
blinded David Brown, a British employee of Coca Cola, in
one eye and blew off several of his fingers. Mr. Brown's
wife was cited in al-Watan as noting that, immediately
prior to the attack, a man in Arab dress had followed them:
another man, she claimed, had given them "suspicious looks"
while they had been shopping in a market that morning.

OFF
WITH THEIR HEADS!

But
the
Saudis were not about to give up on their personal grudge
theory: instead, without notice to anyone, they paraded
Sandy Mitchell and two others  William Sampson, a
Canadian, and Raaf Schifter, a Belgian  in front of
television cameras, where Mitchell and his two friends "confessed"
that they had plotted the bombings. Speaking haltingly,
their eye movements obviously indicating they
were reading from a script, all three men gave detailed
accounts of how they blew up their targets using remote
controlled devices: but for all the detail, including maps
showing the routes taken by their victims, one bit of information
was missing: what was their motive? Mitchell said
during the eerie broadcast that he was "under orders" to
carry out the attacks, but did not say from whom. The Saudis
were similarly close-mouthed, and our friend Price Nayef
refused to even say whether there would be a trial, noting
only that his country would not be "pressured" to spare
the death penalty: in accordance with the barbaric strictures
of Shari'a (Islamic law), the accused will be publicly
beheaded.

A
FISHY STORY

The
news set off a public
firestorm in Britain, especially when the father of
Christopher Rodway told the media that he hoped the beheading
was carried out. Mitchell's family and friends rallied around
him, and refused to believe that he and two of his friends
were behind the vicious car bombings. British diplomats
were equally skeptical: only a week before, they had been
told that Mitchell and five other Brits were being held
for offenses against the Saudi prohibition of alcoholic
beverages and "the next thing we see is this man on television
apparently confessing to murder," said one astonished British
official. There is something very fishy going on
here, and it will take some digging to get to the bottom
of it, but please bear with me  because the story
requires some sense of context, and an ability (or willingness)
to do elementary research. No wonder it was completely missed
by "mainstream" journalists, who have barely reported it
at all, and certainly not in any depth. The whole thing
seems shrouded in mystery, enveloped in a Saudi (and British)-generated
smokescreen, and the story told by the accused  in
their shaky, stumbling voices  just does not make
sense.

THE
"TERRORIST" SAMARITAN

For
example, Raaf Schifter, emergency coordinator at the King
Fahd Hospital for the National Guard, in his staged "confession"
said he accidentally eavesdropped on a conversation between
Mitchell and Sampson about the bomb plot, and so, to make
sure he kept silent they asked him to become complicit and
plant the second bomb! Riding in a car right behind the
blast vehicle, when the bomb went off Shifter jumped out
and helped the wounded  hardly behavior one would
expect from a terrorist. The whole story stinks to high
heaven. As one of Shifter's friends put it: "It hardly sounds
like a master terrorist to spend all day drinking with people
then blow them up while you're driving right behind them."
Indeed.

THE
PLOT SICKENS

A
common thread binds the first two bombings: the victims
were all connected to the various military installations
maintained by the Americans and the British: Rodway was
an engineer at the Internal Security Hospital in Riyadh;
the second attack wounded two nurses who work at the same
hospital, and two men who worked for a Saudi firm, the Al-Salam
aircraft company, which is half-owned by the Boeing Corporation.
Why are Western journalists  and, even more obscenely,
Western governments  standing by and letting those
Saudi savages round up and behead a bunch of Westerners
who obviously had no connection to the bombings and are
being rather crudely set up? Curiouser and curiouser 
and curiouser still. As the plot thickens, the implications
sicken.

THE
CLINTONIZATON OF THE US STATE DEPARTMENT

And
what about Michael Sedlak? Saudi officials assured Western
reporters who bothered to ask that the charges against him,
if any, would soon be "clarified"  but no such clarification
has been forthcoming. Instead, the Saudis have emitted a
steady stream of squid-like obfuscation, just like their
British and American counterparts. I can't resist the temptation
to quote extensively from this excerpt
from a recent State Department daily briefing, in which
the subject of Sedlak comes up, because it dramatizes rather
vividly the duplicity and cynicism of the US and allied
governments, who are quite willing to throw their own people
to the Saudi dogs without any qualms or even a slight twitch
of conscience. A reporter asks about Sedlak's status, and
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher  What?
Is that Clintonian droid still there?  answers
that no charges have been filed against Sedlak, he has been
visited by consular officials, and is "well"  considering
that he's very likely to be beheaded. An unnamed reporter
says: "So tell us more, and Boucher replies:

"I
think that's about all we know that we can tell you.

QUESTION:
"Do we know how long they can hold him under their laws
without charges?"

MR.
BOUCHER: "I don't know. I would have to check on that."

QUESTION:
"Forever."

QUESTION:
"Forever?"

QUESTION:
"In China, I think a senior US diplomat  do you
want to follow up?"

QUESTION:
"Can I ask about one more on Sedlak?: Do you have an
age and a hometown?"

MR.
BOUCHER: "Probably not. No, I'm afraid I don't have that,
but I'll see if I can get it for you."

QUESTION:
"Has he expressed to you why he thinks they are taking
him in, Richard  or toconsular
officials, I should say?"

MR.
BOUCHER: "Again, we just don't have the information on
possible charges that I can giveyou."

A
USEFUL MAN

That
Boucher can stand there in front of reporters and tell such
bald-faced lies is really a skill that any government will
find useful, and that accounts for the continued presence
this Clintonian holdover. It is a tribute to that old saw
about how the more things change, the more they stay the
same  especially in the realm of American foreign
policy, which has an essential continuity no matter which
party is in power. Although there are no pictures to go
along with this briefing transcript, one can almost imagine
the look of barely-concealed contempt on Boucher's face
as he denied all knowledge of the Vinnell
Corporation and added that he was sure they could find
out  knowing, somehow, that they wouldn't bother.

"The
story of this obscure American company shows how the U.S.
government, even after Ollie North and Iran-contra, still
relies on unaccountable private companies to do its dirty
work around the world. . . . If anyone believed that the
era of covert policymaking by the United States had ended,
Vinnell' s role in Saudi Arabia proves otherwise."

EXECUTIVE
MERCENARIES

Founded
in 1931, Vinnell started out making a fortune from Los Angeles
road construction, but after the war started getting into
military work in a major way, with clear connections to
US intelligence operations. Their first international contract
was with the Chinese Nationalists, who were receiving aid
shipments from the US: they later branched out and built
a booming business in America's Asian satraps, constructing
huge military airfields in Taiwan, Okinawa, Thailand, Pakistan,
and South Vietnam. It was in Vietnam that Vinnell really
came into its own as a conduit of US covert policy operations.
Hartung points out that the company "won hundreds of millions
of dollars worth of business," and reached a peak of 5,000
employees involved in South Vietnamese army "training" operations.
But clearly Vinnell had a more direct role in the conflict:
one Pentagon official told the Village Voice, in
March 1975, that Vinnell was "our own little mercenary army
in Vietnam," used when they didn't have the manpower "or
because of legal problems." In an Associated Press interview
with Peter Arnett, one Vinnell employee stationed in Riyadh
was asked whether he saw himself as a mercenary. His answer:
"We are not mercenaries because we are not pulling the triggers.
We train people to pull the triggers. Maybe that makes us
executive mercenaries."

A
MANY-TENTACLED CREATURE

You
really need to follow
this link to Hartung's excellent and very informative piece
for all the lurid details on the shady "business" engaged in by
Vinnell: what is especially revealing is what an enormous fuss was
made over the awarding of the Saudi contract to Vinnell. There were
charges of a payoff to a middleman, and even hawks like Henry
Jackson and John
Stennis were up in arms: none other than Les
Aspin, then an idealistic young Congressman, conducted an investigation
and public hearings, but Vinnell still kept the contract. Vinnell
has its tentacles everywhere, and they are especially entwined with
the US-backed Saudi regime. Hartung cites "a source with contacts
within the Vinnell Corporation" who "indicated that the State Department
encouraged Vinnell to bid on the contract to train the Bosnian [Muslim]
forces. Vinnell's
parent company, BDM, which bought the firm in 1993 to expand
its market niche in military training services, already has a contract
to provide 500 translators for NATO peacekeeping forces in Bosnia."

IT
WAS NO ACCIDENT

Vinnell,
in short, is no "private" company but an extension of US military
and intelligence operations in Saudi Arabia, charged with protecting
the Saudi monarchy from its own people  so why is one of it's
employees charged with aiding if not masterminding a series of murderous
bombings? This is really the question raised by these stunning developments
 stunning, that is, to those journalists who care to follow
up laconic State Department briefings with a little research. The
almost complete inability or unwillingness of the media to pursue
this story speaks, perhaps, to its famous lack of institutional
memory: does anybody even remember the Aspin hearings? But,
really, they don't have to go back that far: they have only
to remember the bombing of the Saudi National Guard and adjacent
building  Vinnell's office  that took
place on November 13, 1995, killing five Americans and wounding
thirty. Hartung cites the trenchant comment of a retired military
officer: "I don't think it was an accident that it was that office
that got bombed. If you wanted to make a political statement about
the Saudi regime, you'd single out the National Guard, and if you
wanted to make a statement about American involvement, you'd pick
the only American contractor involved in training the guard: Vinnell."
But what kind of a statement about American intervention is the
Saudi government making when they imprison a Vinnell employee on
such dubious grounds?

TWO
THEORIES

Given
what we know about Vinnell, Michael Sedlak may as well be an American
soldier in uniform  held hostage not by Islamic fundamentalists
but by the Saudi government. This has truly ominous implications,
and underscores the enormous significance of the story the "mainstream"
media seems to have so far completely missed. For the bizarre attempt
to frame and execute Westerners for conducting a terrorist campaign
against themselves indicates two possible scenarios, both
of which would be disastrous for US policy makers. The first is
that the attack on Vinnell, long associated with the Saudi National
Guard, is an attack on the National Guard's commander, Prince Abdullah,
King
Fahd's brother and the presumptive heir to the throne. With
the King incapacitated by illness, Abdullah is now in charge 
or is he?

THE
ABDULLAH FACTOR

An
alternate  and, in my view, far more likely  theory
is even more ominous for the US, and particularly for the administration
of George W. Bush: the jailing of Sedlak and the others couldn't
have even occurred without Prince Abdullah's knowledge and approval,
and this is the first phase of an anti-Western turn by the House
of Saud. It is well-known
that Abdullah is far
less friendly to the West than his elder brother, and there
has been speculation that, once in power, he will tell rather than
ask the infidels to get out. What better way to hurry along the
hoped-for US withdrawal  and quash any attempt by Vinnell's
"executive mercenaries" to overthrow him  than a campaign
scapegoating foreigners for crimes committed by the Osama
bin Laden crowd?

THE
STRUGGLE FOR THE MIDDLE EAST

This
could be the beginning of some bad news for the Bush administration,
which is bound to take it very hard: The oil fields of Saudi
Arabia have been defended by US troops as if they were they were
the personal property of US policy makers  and, in an important
sense, they are. This administration, famously dominated by Big
Oil, makes no distinction between the corporate interest and the
national interest, and will not give up the Arabian peninsula without
a fight. But whom will they fight? Certainly not the Saudis.
An enemy must be invented, an immediate "threat" that must be averted,
that requires a massive Western military presence and overrides
Abdullah's long-simmering objections: Saddam Hussein fits the bill
just fine. While the eyes of the world are fixed on what is going
on in Israel, and the alleged
rebuilding of weapons factories in Iraq, the real center of
the action is in Riyadh, where the fate of the Middle East is being
decided with virtually no press coverage.

HOSTAGE
CRISIS (SECOND EDITION)

In
Iran, the government held Americans hostage for months while the
world watched  and the Ayatollah brought down a US President.
In Saudi Arabia, today, the same thing is happening, but we hear
nary a peep out of our government or even a single journalist. Now,
I ask you: what's up with that?

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